The federal district court for the Western District of Texas denied the Texas Attorney General and Texas Comptroller’s (State Defendants’) motion to stay pending appeal the court’s February order enjoining them from enforcing a Texas law enacted in 2021 (Senate Bill 13 (SB 13)) that prohibited State of Texas entities from investing in or contracting with companies that “boycott” fossil fuel-based energy companies. The court found that the State Defendants were unlikely to succeed on their arguments (1) that the plaintiff—American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC)—lacked standing and (2) that the court’s First Amendment analysis  wrongly analyzed the law as regulating private conduct rather than as addressing the State of Texas’s role as a market participant. The court further found that the State Defendants did not demonstrate irreparable harm because their asserted harms regarding the injunction’s impacts on contracts were speculative and ASBC’s members demonstrated irreparable harm from losing the opportunity to compete for investments from Texas due to their exercise of their First Amendment rights. The court also found that the injunction of the law was in the public interest.

Challenge to a Texas 2021 law that prohibits certain State entities from investing in or contracting with companies that “boycott fossil fuels.” 

American Sustainable Business Council v. Hancock

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Federal District Court Declined to Stay Injunction of Texas Law Targeting Companies that “Boycott” Fossil Fuels

Filed

United States of America

Texas

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Federal District Court Declined to Stay Injunction of Texas Law Targeting Companies that “Boycott” Fossil Fuels

Policy instrument

Fossil fuel

Economic sector